Tuesday, September 26, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Bill Clinton's fire-breathing defense of his administration's effort to kill Osama bin Laden is getting a thumbs-up from his wife, who says she's tired of Democrats being pushed around on national security issues.

"I just think that my husband did a great job in demonstrating that Democrats are not going to take this," Hillary Rodham Clinton said yesterday.

The senator [added], "All you have to do is read the 9/11 commission . I thought all he did was state what had been repeatedly found in the various studies that have taken place."

Meanwhile, this morning on Today, James Carville and Paul Begala, who will handle my Senate campaign in 2012 after President Hillary's first term in office, also raised the point that this is how Democrats need to respond to such baseless, shameful ploys of the right wing punditry and politicoes. Begala even went so far as to allude to John Kerry's weakness in 2004 on both homeland security and the Swift Boat veterans.

With less than six weeks to go before the midterm elections, and a staggering National Intelligence Assessment report leaked over the weekend about the state of homeland security vis-a-vis the Iraq war, one might be tempted to think that, well, there's a strategy that's been devised and is in play for an early "October Surprise".

I was heartened to see Bill Clinton taking on Chris Wallace, on Wallace's home turf and that Fox at least had the decency to air it unedited (couple of reasons leap to mind, first that their rating went through the roof after a transcript was leaked, and second, they've tried to spin it as 'Clinton loses his temper and goes mad'). If this was the kickoff to the fall campaign, it's going to be a doozy, and it's the type of campaign that we need: a talk on the issues, but tough talk on the issues.

"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor." -- Matt Santos, The West Wing